A Child In A WarTorn Land
by Pepsigirl120
Summary: There's a character in here, Emmy, she's my friend's character, so that's why you don't recognize her! This is ALL HUMAN! Disclaimer for the whole story: Don't own Twilight. Claimer: I own Emmy. Set in Kabul, Afganistan.
1. A Normal Day

The War-Torn Land

One

"I can read that letter as well as Father can," Emmy whispered into the folds of her chador. "Well, almost."

She didn't dare say those words out loud. The man sitting beside her father would not want to hear her voice. Nor would anyone else in the Kabul market. Emmy was only there to help her father walk to the market and back home again after work. She sat well back on the blanket, her head and most of her face covered by her chador.

She wasn't really supposed to be outside at all. The Taliban had ordered all girls and women in Afghanistan to stay inside their homes. They even forbade girls to go to school. Emmy had to leave her sixth-grade class, and her sister Rosalie was not allowed to go to her high school. Their mother had been kicked out of her job as a writer for a Kabul radio station. For more than a year now, they had all been stuck inside one room, along with five-year-old Alice and two-year-old Jasper.

Emmy did get out for a few hours most days to help her father walk. She was always glad to go outside, even though it meant sitting for hours on a blanket spread over the hard ground over the marketplace. At least it was something to do. She had even got used to holding her tongue and hiding her face.

She was small for her eleven years. As a small girl, she could usually get away with being outside without being questioned.

"I need this girl to help me walk," her father would tell any Talib who asked, pointing to his leg. He had lost the lower part of his leg when the high school which he was teaching in was bombed. His insides had been hurt somehow, too. He was often tired.

"I have no son at home, except for an infant," he would explain. Emmy would slump down further on the blanket and try to make herself look smaller. She was afraid to look up at the soldiers. She had seen wheat they did, especially to women, the way they would whip and beat someone they thought should be punished.

Sitting in the marketplace day after day, she had seen a lot. When the Taliban were around, what she wanted most of all was to be invisible.

Now the customer asked her father to read his letter again. "Read it slowly, so that I can remember it for my family."

Emmy would have liked to get a letter. Mail delivery had recently started again in Afghanistan, after years of being disrupted by war. Many of her friends had fled the country with their families. She thought they were in Pakistan, but she wasn't sure, so she couldn't write to them. Her own family had moved so often because of the bombing that her friends no longer knew where she was. "Afghans cover the earth like stars cover the sky," her father often said.

Her father finished reading the man's letter a second time. The customer thanked him and payed. "I will look for you when it is time to write a reply."

Most people in Afghanistan couldn't read or write. Emmy was one of the lucky ones. Both of her parents had been to university, and they believed in education for everyone, even girls.

Customers came and went as the afternoon wore on. Most spoke Dari, the language Emmy spoke best. When a customer spoke in Pashtu, she could recognize most of it, but not all. Her parents could speak English, too. Her father had gone to university in England. That was a long time ago.

The market was a very busy place. Men shopped for their families, and peddlers hawked their goods and services. Some, like the tea shop, had their own stalls. With such a big urn and so many cups, it had to stay in one place. Tea boys ran back and forth into the labyrinth of the marketplace, carrying tea to customers who couldn't leave their own shops, then running back again with the empty cups.

"I could do that," Emmy whispered. She'd like to be able to run around the market, to know its winding streets as well as she knew the four walls of her home.

Her father turned to look at her. "I'd rather see you running around a school yard." He turned around again to call out to the passing men. "Anything written! Anything read! Pastu and Dari! Wonderful items for sale!"

Emmy frowned. It wasn't her fault she wasn't in school! She would rather be there, instead of sitting on this uncomfortable blanket, her back and bottom getting sore. She missed her friends, her black and white school uniform, and doing new things each day.

History was her favorite subject, especially Afghan history. Everybody had come to Afghanistan. The Persians came four thousand years ago. Alexander the Great came, too, followed by the Greeks, Arabs, Turks, British, and finally the Soviets. One of the conquerers, Tamerlane from Samarkand, cut off the heads of his enemies and stacked them in huge piles, like melons at a fruit stand. All these people came to Emmy's beautiful country to try to take it over, and the Afghans had kicked them all out again!

But now the country was ruled by the Taliban militia. They were Afghans, and they had very definite ideas about how things should be run. When they first took over the capital city of Kabul and forbade girls to go to school, Emmy wasn't terribly unhappy. She had a test coming up in arithmetic that she hadn't prepared for, and she was in trouble or talking in class again. The teacher was going to send a note to her mother, but the Taliban took over first.

"What are you crying for?" she had asked Rosalie, who couldn't stop sobbing. "I think a holiday is very nice." Emmy was sure the Taliban would let them go back to school in a few days. By then her teacher would have forgotten all about sending a tattletale note to her mother.

"You're just stupid!" Rosalie screamed at her. "Leave me alone!"

One of the difficulties of living with your whole family in one room was that it was impossible to really leave anyone alone. Wherever Rosalie went, there was Emmy. And wherever Emmy went, there was Rosalie.

Both of Emmy's parents had come from old respected Afghan families. With their education, they had earned high salaries. They had a big house with a courtyard, a couple of servants, a television set, a refrigerator, a car. Rosalie had her own room. Emmy had shared a room with her little sister, Alice. Alice chattered a lot, but she thought Emmy was wonderful. It had certainly been wonderful to get away from Rosalie sometimes.

That house had been destroyed by a bomb. The family had moved several times since then. Every time their house was bombed, they lost more of their things. With each bomb, they got poorer. Now they lived together in one small room.

There had been a war going on in Afghanistan for more than twenty years, twice as long as Emmy had been alive.

At first it was the Soviets who rolled their big tanks into the country and flew war planes that dropped bombs on villages and the country-side.

Emmy was born one month before the Soviets started going back to their own country.

"You were such an ugly baby, the Soviets couldn't stand to be in the same country as you," Rosalie was fond of telling her. "They fled back across the border in horror, as fast as their tanks could carry them."

After the Soviets left, the people who had been shooting at the Soviets decided they wanted to keep shooting at something, so they shot at each other. Many bombs fell on Kabul during that time. Many people died.

Bombs had been part of Emmy's whole life. Every day, every night, rockets would fall out of the sky, and someone's house would explode.

When the bombs fell, people ran. First they ran one way, then another, then they ran another, trying to find a place where the bombs wouldn't find them. When she was younger, Emmy was carried. When she got bigger, she had to do her own running.

Now most of the country was controlled by the Taliban. The word Taliban meant religious scholars, but Emmy's father told her that religion was about teaching people how to be better human beings, how to be kinder. "The Taliban are not making Afghanistan a kinder place to live!" he said.

Although bombs still fell on Kabul, they didn't fall as often as they used to. There was still a war going on in the north of the country, and that was where most of the killing took place these days.

After a few more customers came and gone, Father suggested they end their work for the day.

Emmy jumped to feet, then collapsed back down again. Her foot was asleep. She rubbed it, then tried again. This time she was able to stand.

First she gathered up all the little items they were trying to sell-dishes, pillowcases, household ornaments that had survived the bombing. Like many Afghans, they sold what they could. Mother and Rosalie regularly went through what was left of the family's belongings to see what they could spare. There were so many people selling things in Kabul, Emmy marveled that there was anyone left to buy them.

Father packed his pens and writing paper in his shoulder bag. Leaning on his walking stick and taking Emmy's arm, he slowly stood up. Emmy shook the dust out of the blanket, folded it up, and they were on their way.

For short distances Father could manage on his walking stick. For longer journeys he needed Emmy to lean on.

"You're just the right height." he said.

"What will happen when I grow?"

"Then I will grow with you!"

Father used to have a false leg, but he sold it. He hadn't planned to. False legs had to be specially made, and one person's false leg didn't necessarily fit another. But when a customer saw Father's leg on the blanket, he ignored the other things for sale and demanded to buy the leg. He offered such a good price that Father eventually relented.

There were a lot of false legs for sale in the market now. Since the Taliban decreed that women must stay inside, many husbands took their wives' false legs away. "You're not going anywhere, so why do you need a leg?" They asked.

There were bombed-out buildings all over Kabul. Neighborhoods had turned from homes and businesses into bricks and dust.

Kabul had once been beautiful. Rosalie remembered whole sidewalks, traffic lights that changed color, evening trips to restaurants and cinemas, browsing in fine shops for clothes and books.

For most of Emmy's life, the city had been in ruins, and it was hard for her to imagine it another way. It hurt her to hear stories of old Kabul before the bombing. She didn't want to think about everything the bombs had taken away, including her father's health and their beautiful home. It made her angry, and since she could do nothing with her anger, it made her sad.

They left the busy part of the market and turned down a side street to their building. Emmy carefully guided her father around the pot holes and broken places in the road.

"How do women in burqas manage to walk along these streets?" Emmy asked her father. "How do they see where they are going?"

"They fall down a lot," her father replied. He was right. Emmy had seen them fall.

She looked at her favorite mountain. It rose up majestically at the end of her street.

"What's the name of that mountain?" she had asked her father soon after they moved into their new neighborhood.

"That's Mount Emmy."

"It is not," Rosalie said scornfully.

"You shouldn't lie to the child," Mother had said. The whole family had been out walking together, in the time just before the Taliban. Mother and Rosalie just wore light scarves around their hair. Their faces soaked up the Kabul sunshine.

"Mountains are named by people," Father said. "I am a person, and I name that mountain Mount Emmy."

Her mother gave in, laughing. Father laughed too, and Emmy and baby Alice, who didn't even know why she was laughing. Even grumpy Rosalie joined in. The sound of the family's laughter scampered up Mount Emmy and back down into the street.

Now Emmy and her father slowly made their way up the steps of their building. They lived on the third floor of an apartment building. It had been hit in a rocket attack, and half of it was rubble.

The stairs were on the outside of the building, zigzagging back and forth on their way up. They had been damaged by the bomb, and didn't quite meet in places. Only some parts of the staircase had a railing.

"Never rely on the railing," Father told Emmy over and over. Going up was easier for Father than going down, but it still took a long time.

Finally they reached the door of their home and went inside.


	2. The Taliban

Two

A/N: Carlisle gets taken away in this chapter!

Mother and Rosalie were cleaning again.

Father kissed Jasper and Alice, went to the bathroom to wash the dust off his face, then stretched out on a toshak for a rest.

Emmy put down her bundles and started to take off her chador.

"We need water," Rosalie said.

"Can't I sit down for awhile first?" Emmy asked her mother.

"You will rest better when your work is done. Now go. The water tank is almost empty."

Emmy groaned. If the tank was almost empty, she'd have to make five trips to the water tap. Six, because her mother hated to see an empty water bucket.

"If you had fetched it yesterday, when Mother asked you, you wouldn't have so much to haul today." Rosalie said as Emmy passed by her to get to the water bucket. Rosalie smiled her superior big-sister smile and flipped her hair back over her shoulders. Emmy wanted to kick her.

Rosalie had beautiful hair, long and thick. Emmy's hair was thin and stringy. She wanted hair like her sister's, and Rosalie knew this.

Emmy grumbled all the way down the steps and down the block to the neighborhood tap. The trip home, with a full bucket, was worse, especially the three flights of stairs. Being angry at Rosalie gave her the energy to do it, so Emmy kept grumbling.

"Rosalie never goes for water, nor does Mother. Alice doesn't either. She doesn't have to do anything!"

Emmy knew she was mumbling nonsense, but she kept it up anyway. Alice was only five, and she couldn't carry an empty bucket downstairs, let alone a full bucket upstairs. Mother and Rosalie had to wear burqas when -ever they went outside, and they couldn't carry a pail of water up those uneven broken stairs if they were wearing burqas. Plus, it was dangerous for women to go outside without a man.

Emmy knew she had to fetch the water because there was nobody else in the family to do it. Sometimes this made her resentful. Sometimes, it made her proud. One thing she knew-it didn't matter how she felt. Good mood or bad, the water had to be fetched, and she had to fetch it.

Finally the tank was full, the water bucket was full, and Emmy could slip off her sandals, hang up her chador, and relax. She sat on the floor beside Alice and watched her little sister draw a picture.

"You're very talented, Alice. One day you will sell you drawings for tons and tons of money. We will be very rich and live in a palace, and you will wear blue silk dresses."

"Green silk," Alice said.

"Green silk," Emmy agreed.

"Instead of just sitting there, you could help us over here." Mother and Rosalie were cleaning out the cupboard again.

"You just cleaned out the cupboard three days ago!"

"Are you going to help us or not?"

Not, Emmy thought, but she got to her feet. Mother and Rosalie were always cleaning something. Since they couldn't work or go to school, they didn't have much else to do. "The Taliban have said we must stay inside, but that doesn't mean we have to live in filth," Mother was fond of saying.

Emmy hated all that cleaning. It used up the water she had to haul. The only thing worse was for Rosalie to wash her hair.

Emmy looked around their tiny room. All of the furniture she remembered from their other houses had been destroyed by bombs or stolen by looters. All they had now was a tall wooden cupboard, which had been in the room when they rented it. It held the few belongings they had been able to save. Two toshaks were set against the walls, and that was all the furniture they had. They used to have beautiful Afghan carpets. Emmy remembered tracing the intricate patterns of them with her fingers when she was younger. Now there was just cheap matting over the cement floor.

Emmy could cross their main room with ten regular steps one way and twelve regulars steps the other way. It was usually her job to sweep the mat with their tiny whisk broom. She knew every inch of it.

At the end of the room was the lavatory. It was a very small room with a platform toilet-not the modern Western toilet they used to have. The little propane cookstove was kept in there because a tiny vent, high in the wall, kept fresh air coming into the room. The water tank was there, too-a metal drum that held five pails of water-and the wash basin was next to that.

Other people lived in the part of the building that was still standing. Emmy saw them as she went to fetch water or went out with her father to the marketplace. "We must keep our distance," Father told her. "The Taliban encourage neighbor to spy on neighbor. It is safer to keep to ourselves.

It may have been safer, Emmy thought, but it was also lonely. Maybe there was another girl her age, right close by, but she'd never find out. Father had his books, Alice played with Jasper, Rosalie had Mother, but Emmy didn't have anybody.

Mother and Rosalie had wiped down the cupboard shelves. Now they were putting things back.

"Here is a pile of things for your father to sell in the market. Put them by the door," Mother directed her.

The vibrant red cloth caught Emmy's eye. "My good shalwar kameez! We can't sell that!"

"I decide what we're going to sell, not you. There's no longer any use for it, unless you're planning to go to parties you haven't bothered to tell me about."

Emmy knew there was no point in arguing. Ever since she had been forced out of her job, Mother's temper grew shorter every day.

Emmy put the outfit with the other items by the door. She ran her fingers over the delicate embroidery. It had been an Eid present from her aunt in Mazar-e-Sharif, a city in the north of Afghanistan. She hoped her aunt would be angry at her mother for selling it.

"Why don't we sell Rosalie's good clothes? She's not going anywhere."

"She'll need them when she gets married."

Rosalie made a superior sort of face at Emmy. As an extra insult, she tossed her head to make her long hair swing.

"I pity whoever marries you," Emmy said. "He will be getting a stuck-up snob for a wife."

"That's enough," Mother said.

Emmy fumed. Mother always took Rosalie's side. Emmy hated Rosalie, and she'd hate her mother, too, if she wasn't her mother.

Her anger melted when she saw her mother pick up the parcel of Ben's clothes and put it away on the top shelf of the cupboard. Her mother always looked sad when she touched Ben's clothes.

Rosalie hadn't always been the oldest. Ben had been the oldest child. He had been killed by a land mine when he was fourteen years old. Mother and Father never talked about him. To remember him was too painful. Rosalie had told Emmy about him during one of the rare times they were talking to each other.

Ben had laughed a lot, was always trying to get Rosalie to play games with him, even though she was a girl. "Don't be such a princess," he'd say. "A little football will do you good!" Sometimes, Rosalie said, she'd give in and play, and Ben would always kick the ball to her in a way that she could stop it and kick it back.

"He used to pick you up and play with you a lot," Rosalie told Emmy. "He actually seemed to like you. Imagine that!"

From Rosalie's stories, Ben sounded like someone Emmy would have liked, too.

Seeing the pain in her mother's face, Emmy put her anger away and quietly helped get supper ready.

The family ate Afghan-style, sitting around a plastic cloth spread on the floor. Food cheered everyone up, and the family lingered after the meal was over.

At some point, Emmy knew a secret signal would pass between her mother and Rosalie, and the two of them would rise at the same instant to begin cleaning up. Emmy had no idea how they did it. She would watch for a sign to go between the two of them, but she could never see one.

Jasper was dozing on Mother's lap, a piece of nan in his little fist. Every now and then he would realize he was falling asleep and would rouse himself, as if he hated the thought of missing something. He'd try to get up, but Mother held him quite firmly. After wiggling for a moment, he'd give up and doze off again.

Father, looking rested after his nap, had changed into his good white shalwar kameez. His long beard was neatly combed. Emmy thought he looked very handsome.

When the Taliban first came and ordered all men to grow beards, Emmy had a hard time getting used to her father's face. He had never worn a beard before. It itched a lot at first.

Now he was telling stories from history. He had been a history teacher before his school was bombed. Emmy had grown up with his stories, which made her a very good student in history class.

"It was 1880, and the British were trying to take over our country. Did we want the British to take over?" he asked Alice.

"No!" Alice answered.

"We certainly did not. Everybody comes to Afghanistan trying to take over, but we Afghans kick them all out. We are the most welcoming, hospitable people on earth. A guest to us is a king. You girls remember that. When a guest comes to your house, he must have the best of everything."

"Or she," Emmy said.

Father grinned at her. "Or she. We Afghans do everything we can to make our guest comfortable. But if someone comes into our home or our country and acts like our enemy, then we will defend our home."

"Father, get on with the story," Emmy urged. She had heard it before, many times, but she wanted to hear it again.

Father grinned again. "We must teach this child some patience," he said to Mother. Emmy didn't need to look at her mother to know she was probably thinking they needed to teach her a whole lot more than that.

"All right," he relented. "On with the story. It was 1880. In the dust around the city of Kandahar, the Afghans were fighting the British. It was a terrible battle. Many were dead. The British were winning, and the Afghans were ready to give up. Their spirits were low, they had no strength. Surrender and capture were starting to look good to them. At least they could rest and maybe save their lives.

"Suddenly a tiny girl, younger than Rosalie, burst out from one of the village houses. She ran to the front of the battle and turned to face the Afghan troops. She ripped the veil off her head, and with the hot sun streaming down on her face and bare head, she called to the troops. "We can win this battle!'she cried. "Don't give up hope! Pick yourselves up! Let's go!" Waving her veil in the air like a battle flag, she led the troops into a final rush at the British. The British had no chance. The Afghans won the battle.

"The lesson here, my daughters," he looked from one to the other, "is that Afghanistan has always been the home of the bravest women in the world. You are all brave women. You are all inheritors of the courage of Malali."

"We can win this battle!" Alice cried out, waving her arm around as if she were holding a flag. Mother moved the teapot out of harm's way.

"How can we be brave?" Rosalie asked. "We can't even go outside. How can we lead men into battle? I've seen enough war. I don't want to see anymore."

"There are many types of battles," Father said quietly.

"Including the battle with the supper dishes," Mother said.

Emmy made such a face that Father started to laugh. Alice tried to imitate it, which made Mother and Rosalie laugh. Jasper woke up, saw everybody laughing, and he started to laugh, too.

The whole family was laughing when four Taliban soldiers burst through the door.

Jasper was the first to react. The slam of the door against the wall shocked him, and he screamed.

Rosalie covered herself completely with her chador and scrunched herself into a small ball. Young women were sometimes stolen by soldiers. They were snatched from their homes, and their families never saw them again.

Emmy couldn't move. She sat as if frozen at the edge of the supper cloth. The soldiers were giants, their piled-high turbans making them look even taller.

Two of the soldiers grabbed her father. The other two began searching the apartment, kicking the remains of dinner all over the floor.

"Leave him alone!" Mother screamed. "he has done nothing wrong!"

"Why did you go to England for your education?" the soldiers yelled at Father. " Afghanistan doesn't need your foreign ideas!" They yanked him toward the door.

"Afghanistan needs more illiterate thugs like you," Father said. One of the soldiers hit him in the face. Blood dripped from his nose onto his white shalwar kameez.

Mother sprang at the soldiers, pounding them with her fists. She grabbed Father's arm and tried to pull him out of their grasp.

One of soldiers raised his rifle and whacked her on the head. She collapsed on the floor. The soldier hit her a few more times. Alice and Jasper screamed with every blow to their mother's back.

Seeing her mother on the ground finally pulled Emmy into action. When the soldiers dragged her father outside, she flung her arms around his waist. As the soldiers pried her loose, she heard her father say, "Take care of the others, my Malali." Then he was gone.

Emmy watched helplessly as tow soldiers dragged him down the steps, his beautiful shalwar kameez ripping on the rough cement. Then they turned a corner, and she could see them no more.

Inside the room, the other two soldiers were ripping open the toshaks with knives and tossing things out of the cupboard.

Father's books! At the bottom of the cupboard was a secret compartment her father had built to hide the few books that had not been destroyed in one of the bombings. Some were English books about history and literature. They were kept hidden because the Taliban burned books they didn't like.

They couldn't be allowed to find Father's books! The soldiers had started at the top of the cupboard and were working their way down. Clothes, blankets, pots-everything landed on the floor.

Closer and closer they came to the bottom shelf, the one with the false wall. Emmy watched in horror as the soldiers bent down to yank the things out of the bottom shelf.

"Get out of my house!" she yelled. She threw herself at the soldiers with such force that they both fell to the ground. She swung with her fists until she was knocked aside. She heard rather than felt the thwack of their sticks on her back. She kept her head hidden in her arms until the beating stopped and the soldiers went away.

Mother got off the the floor and had her hands full with Jasper. Rosalie was still curled up in a terrified ball. It was Alice who came to help Emmy.

At the first touch of her sister's hands, Emmy flinched thinking it was the soldiers. Alice kept stroking her hair until Emmy realized who it was. She sat up, aching all over. She and Alice clung to each other, trembling.

She had no idea how long the family stayed like that. They remained in their spots long after Jasper stopped screaming and collapsed into sleep.


End file.
